Well, it's been almost a month since our last post, when we found out we were having a little girl, and our weekends since have been whirlwinds of activity, everything from weddings to spring cleaning to baby registries, and now painting the nursery! A couple of posts back we showed everyone the nursery bedding with the tree tops/woodland theme, and we decided we would paint the crib wall to match that theme. After some planning and discussion, and a couple of quick sketches, we took the baby quilt that comes with the crib set to Ace and bought ourselves some paint and other supplies.
We started by taping off the base boards, door frames, electrical outlets, and ceiling, and then taped down some plastic sheeting on the floor. Here are a few preparation photos:
 |
| Tamara taping down plastic sheeting over the floor |
 |
| Tools, supplies, color samples, and sketches |
 |
| The final plastic sheet protection - ready to start painting! |
Next, we drew three hills along the bottom of the wall and marked off with tape where the basic outlines of the two trees would be. We then painted over the top half of the wall with blue for the sky, and then painted green in for the hills. We're using three different colors of green, two for the hills, and all three for the leaves on the trees:
 |
| The blue sky painted in and two of three hills; we wanted to also overlap the scenery onto the adjacent walls without carrying the sky over |
 |
| Now the third hill is painted in; this hill will mostly be covered by the crib when we're all done |
 |
| We added a little pond in the corner as well - a little frog and turtle are going to live there to match the crib bedding |
We went back and forth for a bit about how we were going to do the trees next...using a stencil or template or what...finally Jason decided to freehand draw them in on the wall, with branches and tips similar to the crib bedding, one tree on each side of where the crib will be, framing it like a little arbor. Rather than trying to make the leaves realistic to a certain tree, we also decided to do several types of leaves and kind of make the tree more generic and playful, with lots for the baby to see. With all of that drawn in, we printed images from the web of the animals on the bedding, and using carbon paper, traced them on to different sizes on the wall:
 |
| The right-hand tree, with a little squirrel drawn on a branch |
 |
| A close-up of the squirrel - isn't he cute? |
 |
| Some branches and leaves near the top of one of the two trees |
 |
| A little songbird on a branch of the left-hand tree; we are thinking we will add some lavender and pink to the birds (along with some flowers yet to be drawn) to bring in some girly colors to the room |
With everything pencilled in, it was time to start applying paint. We worked most of the afternoon yesterday on painting the trees, finishing off all of the branches late in the day. Tamara did a fantastic job painting in the orange color on a few of the animals, and next will be finishing the animals off and painting leaves everywhere:
 |
| A smiling raccoon sitting on a branch of the left-hand tree, with some of the branches around him painted |
 |
| A mama owl sitting on a branch in the left-hand tree |
 |
| A partially painted squirrel in a hole (he's got an acorn) and a fox on the hill |
 |
| Back to mama owl, now with beak and feet painted in |
 |
| Now the raccoon has a stripe painted in on his tail and you can see the baby owl that's flying between the two trees |
 |
| The baby owl again and now the squirrel on the right-hand tree partially painted in |
 |
| A baby deer, walking on the hilltop near the window waiting to be painted in - he's a bit skewed only because the photo was taken at an angle |
Finally, we'll wrap this post up with a couple of the wider shots that show both trees together. The crib will sit right between them perfectly, and we're making sure to face all of the animals toward the crib as we paint them in. More to come, as we've got our work cut out for us in the coming weeks!
 |
| View of the two trees and hills taken from the doorway into the room |
 |
| A more straight-forward shot |
 |
| The left-hand tree |
 |
| The right-hand tree |
